6 months. You're still in the very early stages. Think of it as preparing for Green Belt, which is substantive Trad JJ and will hurt. I'm guessing theirs is a variation of the BJJA GB syllabus.

Looks OK to me.

I'm a mite sceptical also of Unarmed Samurai. I also heard a 7th Dan (RIP) say that Ju Jitsu was the Unarmed system of the ordinary working man. This makes more sense to me, bearing in Mind the Ronin, who would prey on them. Perhaps this helps explain the weapon systems of ordinary agricultural implements: Nuns, Tonfa, Bo etc.

It does help as you acquire more understanding and evolving skill of a specific technique to encounter more Resistance; otherwise how can you gain Confidence? This will lead to you doing Locking Sets, the underlying principle being that you are about to be Over-powered and losing the Lock hence you move to a new Lock etc etc. This should result in your opponent being worn down and placed in a final lock from which he can't escape.

Punches. Well, punch like you mean it. That's what the higher grades expect or their technique will be useless. For myself, I do indeed get 'clocked' and still have a loss of feeling in part of my Face and teeth :-)

One thing the fabled Samurai class certainly did back in the day was spar hard and spar often.

If there's knowlege that's been lost to time then it's a real shame. Those guys certainly praticed what they preached as much as humanly possible.

Another thing to note is that it was their job to be good at "being a Samurai". They didn't do this stuff after a shift at the noodle house (like we do). It was their life's quest to perfect their skills. Be it caligraphy, flower aranging, or fighting.

And they weren't afriad to test their might either. They'd go hard with boken in exibition matchesduring times of peace. They'de take heads on the battle field with sacred steel durring times of war. They'd burn incence in their helmet as a gift of respect to the warrior who was skilled enough to beat them.

Being a noble badass was their life. That was their quest. It's all they were expected to do in this world. Even their death was expected to be a moment of martial perfection. To pursue anything else was an unthinkable disshonnor.

Only an independantly rich eccentric would be able to even attempt that level of dedication in this day and age. So don't expect anything you find at the local strip mall to be as deadly or refined as it may have been 400 years ago. It's just not the same world or society anymore.

One thing the fabled Samurai class certainly did back in the day was spar hard and spar often.

If there's knowlege that's been lost to time then it's a real shame. Those guys certainly praticed what they preached as much as humanly possible.

Another thing to note is that it was their job to be good at "being a Samurai". They didn't do this stuff after a shift at the noodle house (like we do). It was their life's quest to perfect their skills. Be it caligraphy, flower aranging, or fighting.

And they weren't afriad to test their might either. They'd go hard with boken in exibition matchesduring times of peace. They'de take heads on the battle field with sacred steel durring times of war. They'd burn incence in their helmet as a gift of respect to the warrior who was skilled enough to beat them.

Being a noble badass was their life. That was their quest. It's all they were expected to do in this world. Even their death was expected to be a moment of martial perfection. To pursue anything else was an unthinkable disshonnor.

Only an independantly rich eccentric would be able to even attempt that level of dedication in this day and age. So don't expect anything you find at the local strip mall to be as deadly or refined as it may have been 400 years ago. It's just not the same world or society anymore.

I hate to break it to you, but probably the vast majority of people who lived as samurai were bureaucrats who helped run their lord's estates and holdings.

The Edo Period which started in 1600 and lasted until the opening of Japan and the Meiji Restoration in the late 1800's was 200 years of national peace. There were a few rebellions early on which required massed troops, but mostly the samurai perfected their book keeping skills! Sure they carried swords as badges of office. They probably showed up at the dojo a couple of times a week and practiced their swordsmanship or jujutsu. But their routines were probably much more like ours than we realize. Get up, go to work for the man, train for a couple of hours, complain about work to the wife, repeat the next day. There's a reason this is the time period in which most koryu developed their kata.

Even during the earlier periods it wasn't warfare and fighing all the time. There were some long, relatively peaceful stretches. Let's not over romanticize the samurai into legions of unstoppable killing machines. They weren't all Itto Ogami striding out of a black-and-white manga, ya know.

I will agree, however, that kata was not the only training method of the day, and sparring and competing with other schools were both used by koryu. And I'm not saying there weren't plenty of badass warriors when the times called for them.

So is there samurai-era sparring gear out there? Cause sparring with oak 2 handed swords without gear seems really dangerous. They tried bokken fights at last year's Beat The Crap Out of Cancer IIRC, resulting in broken bones.

So is there samurai-era sparring gear out there? Cause sparring with oak 2 handed swords without gear seems really dangerous. They tried bokken fights at last year's Beat The Crap Out of Cancer IIRC, resulting in broken bones.

You've hit upon exactly the reason why the shinai was developed in the first place. I'd have to go down to the basement and dig out all the details, but IIRC primitive shinai do show up around the middle of the Edo Period, along with padded armor. It appears padded spears were also in use. I'm sure a Kendo fan can fill in the details by the time I find the right references.

Here are some sketches by Hokusai of samurai sparring with various equipment. It's not clear whether the swords are bokken or shinai:

I honestly don't know how bokkens were used for "safe" sparring before then. I imagine matches being more like the economy of movement in this scene in Seven Samurai than a wild duel from Highlander or a lightsaber bout. Maybe sparring was only as safe as your opponent's control? That's similar to what we see in the clip. You'll note they're using makeshift bamboo staves in place of swords.

But I recognize the danger here that I'm over-romanticizing too. It's something to help visualize what it might've been like.

How much extra gear does one need to spar in jujutsu? Just like today, sparring within a school probably varied in intensity based on skill and experience.

Again I'm going by memory, but it seems that even friendly matches outside the home training hall were quite rough and tumble, and injuries were pretty common. There are references to jujutsu matches from the late Edo Period that sound very much like our pro matches in which participants fought for prizes and went pretty hard.

Last edited by Styygens; 10/03/2012 8:09pm at .
Reason: found the Hokusai sketches...

Haha, is that 2nd guy on the left blocking while running away or what?

Again I'm going by memory, but it seems that even friendly matches outside the home training hall were quite rough and tumble, and injuries were pretty common. There are references to jujutsu matches from the late Edo Period that sound very much like our pro matches in which participants fought for prizes and went pretty hard.

IIRC the jujutsu teacher of W.E. Fairbairn (Ozaki?) had a sign that said "Jujutsu and bonesetting". It kinda makes sense for a JJ master to get into that, but maybe it suggests that bonesetting was necessary for JJ injuries. From randori/challenge fights? Maybe, but seeing "old school" JJ videos of dudes doing high amplitude throws on hardwood floors during more choreographed training makes me think it could easily be from non-sparring training as well.

IIRC shinai might be first documented as a Kashima Shinden Jikishinkage Ryu invention the early 1700s; they certainly championed the gekiken-style tournaments, and had a real influence on pre-war Kendo. Another example of sparring with training gear in classical budo is Owari Kan Ryu; even today, you can see them in Nagoya demonstrating free form sparring with their kuda yari. Maniwa Nen Ryu has also incorporated such training, at least for the sword portion of their curriculum. Tenjin Shin'yo Ryu exponents reportedly spar after a certain amount of kata practice. Then there are also ryuha which didn't spar much pre-Meiji or even pre-war, but have been doing so recently; one line of Araki Ryu comes to mind.

I think it's important to remember that Japan was and still is a rather diverse place in some respects. Samurai were not all cut from the same cloth; there was plenty of stratification in their class, rich and poor, urban and rural. These realities had an influence in the content and manner of training, if as some have pointed out a samurai was training at all.

Also, research on the topic by Dr. Karl Friday indicates that Koryu began as additional training for warriors, and only became the de facto military training well into the Edo period, after large-scale warfare was scarce. Others have observed that Sumo in its pre-modern forms was more or less the Judo of its time. If you consider that the bushi of yore were wrestling each other and fighting wars, Koryu begins to look a lot more like a finishing school; a place where fighters go to get something or things very specific.